ARICHAT: Richmond Municipal Council is looking for ways to enforce bylaws.
During the regular monthly meeting on March 27 in Arichat, Warden Amanda Mombourquette provided an update on the Regional Bylaw Enforcement Officer.
The warden said officials from the Town of Mulgrave, the Municipality of the County of Richmond, the Municipality of the County of Inverness, and the Town of Port Hawkesbury held a meeting recently and decided to identify their top three priorities.
“We discussed the difference in our bylaws, and there was a whole lot less commonality between the multiple municipal partners at the table than I thought there was going to be,” she told council. “Each municipality will bring those top three forward and then the group will meet again to further narrow down the field and identify if there’s a job description and a set of policies and procedures that we can create around this type of position.”
The municipal partners have shared goals and Mombourquette said it’s an “exciting opportunity.”
“I think we could look at developing some standardized bylaws across the board, learning from each other and making things consistent,” she said.
Councillors decided to bring this up at the next Bylaw and Policy Committee meeting and consult with staff on which policies to consider.
Councillors also approved a recommendation from the Planning Advisory/Heritage Committee to approve Eastern District Planning Commission Manager of Building Inspection Services Sean Donovan and Senior Building Official Jonathan Martin as special constables for land use bylaw enforcement, effective April 21.
During the question period near the beginning of the meeting, St. Peter’s resident Buddy MacDonald had questions about the special constable.
“Has the role been defined, documented, has the process flow been defined and documented, have the policies and procedures been defined and documented, and accepted by council?” he asked.
The warden responded that they have had preliminary discussions about the position.
“And the roles and authority they have in other counties would just roll over into ours, as it’s defined currently,” CAO Troy MacCulloch noted. “I believe there’s very limiting use of this special constable in this role.”
MacDonald wanted to know if the role of the special constable will be fully defined before anyone is approved by council. He also wanted information on the appeal process for those found in violation.
“It sounds like the cart’s going before the horse,” he told council.
“We may appoint who it will be, but before they begin to act in the position, we should have that information,” Mombourquette replied.
The CAO added that they had to appoint someone by April 1.
“This is the first time coming from the PAC to here that in the allocations that we need to determine tonight for Eastern District Planning Commission budget for 2023, we had to decide whether we wanted to look at having a special constable,” he added. “Through that office, we had to assign that person by April 1. So it’s still being hammered out at the PAC on what that looks like, but they wanted to have that person in there so it at least could be developed this year. Because if we don’t give them notice by April 1, it’s not happening until April 1 of next year.”